Years of Poems and Spirits

A really wonderful book. As enlightening as E.P. Thompson’s classic.

I remember Kent G asked us during class – what is “class consciousness”? It was then I suddenly realized, oh, it is not something that is always there!

Perry’s book really helped me to complete the intellectual journey started with this question. In my mind at least, there is no longer such a structural being called “class consciousness”. It is more organic, something grows out of a complex makeup of social soil.

Note, this is a second try. It failed last time when I tried to write a comprehensive review. It just didn’t work out. This book took me several month to finish on the 3rd try (ever since recommended by DS a year ago), it is not like while I was in school when I had to finish a couple of books a week. The memory faded by the time I started writing review but thoughts and inductions abound. It is really hard to write something concise that way.

I also thought about book reviews like those in the New Yorker. But they are more like literature reviews, each comes with broad references and, more importantly, a clear narrative of how a certain subject evolved. I am nowhere near being able to discuss Labor Study (or even Labor History in China) in that way. So I gave up writing last time.

I am grateful for this book because it helped me to recalibrate my view on Marxism. Its Historical Materialism still wield a heavy influence on my world view but at the same time I know it is just another theory among many. The difficulty is to escape my own myopia and put what brought me here in a proper lineup. I have been trying to do so for years. Finally, with help from this book, I found some kind of closure.

In the book, Perry developed two themes: First, different workers protest differently. Second, they become different as a result of their social relationship with each other. In general, Perry argues, the more skilled workers are more likely to engage in class struggle. The less skilled are more likely to be thugs (aka Lumpenproletariat in Marxist lexicon). In Shanghai’s example, it is the printing press mechanics, the managers in Postal service and so on, are the CCP-affiliated activists. The tobacco rollers and textile workers, on the other hand, are easy recruits of the GMD-controlled Green Gang members.

However, her second point is more subtle. Paraphrasing Charles Tilly’s words, “A worker’s skill is a type of social relationship”, Perry used the first half of the book to develop a narrative on how a worker’s native place can determine his political awareness. It makes total sense in the Chinese context where I grew up – people from Jiangnan are generally considered smarter, are quicker learners. They tend to get better jobs, which heightened their self-consciousness and political demand. All of this development was further nurtured by a strong native-place bondage, apprenticeship training and the existence of Habermas-ian public space.

There it is: class consciousness is not a uniformed, structural being. It is not the same in every culture, at different times, or even within the same “working class”. It is very much a product of socio-cultural environment–as much as that of the material-production relationship that Karl Marx thought was the defining character. In other words, class consciousness, like religion, it is not something everyone is born with, but rather a gift one may or may not receive somewhere in one’s life. No wonder Perry uses terms like “rise above” to describe the formation of class-consciousness. Here you go, Migdal, this is you exegesis.

Just some random thoughts on the financial crisis. Actually, there is a lot. Not sure if I can link them altogether. Otherwise, I would be doing something else for a living.

1. A very good article on WaPo about the different reform ideas advanced by Geithner and Volcker.  The core of Geithner’s theme is to put a requirement on reserves. Volcker’s is stiffer by shifting back to Glass-Steagall.

2. The article also says,

government guarantees designed to spur lending by letting banks borrow cheaply were instead funding banks’ speculative investments and fueling soaring profits

I was amused while reading this part. I can imagine how maddening this must be to Geithner: on the one hand, he’s taking the flak for protecting the status quo on Wall Street. On the other hand, the very people he’s protecting just can’t stop undermining his position.

3. I have my own doubts on whether it is possible to go back to Glass-Steagall. The input I received was very mixed. I still remember the momentum behind the drive to repeal it in the 1990s. The way it was portrayed in the media was that it was out-dated. The repeal itself seemed like just a formal recognition of what “everyone on Wall Street” already knows. Then I heard Chris Dodd saying voting for it was one of his biggest regrets, which implies he had other choices or repealing G-S wasn’t that inevitable.

4. I don’t know enough about Volcker. But I really liked his idea of nationalizing the big banks during the crisis (early last year). It seemed fair and reasonable. But Volcker doesn’t have many supporters in the establishment. Yet there has to be some balance between being the best solution and being a likely solution.

5. Another source of doubt (about going back to Glass-Steagall) comes from my earlier thoughts on adding a tax to all financial transactions so that the public has a control nub to turn. After some thoughts, now I am not sure that is workable solution. There are so many types of “financial transactions” that it is really hard to demarcate what is speculative transaction and what is not. In a way, it comes back to the difficulty of defining Mark-to-Market rule in GAAP guidelines.

6. If it is hard to discriminate “speculative” from “non-speculative”, isn’t it equally hard to separate commercial banking from investment banking? Like what do you with the deposit in a commercial bank? You have to invest it somewhere. Do you allow a commercial bank to buy financial products or to use a middleman to manage the capital? And how do you define a “financial product?”

7. I may not be asking the right questions. But at the same time, I am not convinced either that putting the firewall back up is a proactive way to stop speculation once for all. After all, we tried it before.

8. The GOP’s idea–don’t intervene on the means, but set an clear boundary on the outcome, then the market will correct itself, doesn’t fly either. Garrett from NJ was saying, if you tell the banks that there is not a public safety net, they will behave. That is a pretty lame presupposition. Not even Greenspan is on board this time.

9. So it becomes somewhat an intellectual challenge, kind of like, how do you treat cancer? Cancer cells are normal cells gone rogue. Credit/market liquidity is kind of like that: you need a vibrant source of credit for the economy. But some times, the source (i.e. Wall Street) produces so much liquidity that causes bubble (tumor).

10. Maybe that is why financial reform appears so appealing but so difficult to carry out. It is like when people see cancer, they think it is a disease. But it is not (at least not in the sense that the body is attacked by external organisms). It is part of us, like aging.

I try to make it a rule not to comment on day-to-day political grind. Since the partisan cacophony is like background noise, if you pay too close attention to it, you lose the big picture.

But I think tomorrow’s MA special election to fill Teddy Kennedy’s seat can be a monumental event. If Coakley loses, to me at least, it says volume about where this country is or where it is heading.

If that event did transpire, one can almost hear a loud, collective groan coming underneath Kennedy family’s cemetery. It is as if everything the Family from Joe on down has fought for–whether out of the pursuit of power or a sense of social justice–is gone now. Surveying what is left of the Kennedy brand, one can’t help but feel like watching the last whirlpool above the Titanic.

But the historical importance is even more grave. If media reports are to be believed, the prospect of losing the Kennedy seat was so unlikely just a few weeks ago, the Democrats in the Congress did not have a Plan B for Obama’s Health Care Bill. Without a Health Care Reform to write home about, the Democrats will certainly lose big again like it was 1994 all over. Not that I am a partisan Democrat. But the fact remains that, nowadays, the Democratic Party is the only political venue where disparate social factions can participate and play politics. The GOP is increasingly looking like a Nazi organization.

It is pretty sad that the great hope that came with Obama just a year ago is in such peril today: forget about the Financial Industry Reform, forget about holding people like John Yoo accountable, forget about Immigration Reform, forget about Climate Change, forget about all other things that excited the Progressives who thought eight-years of Bush-Cheney is in itself enough a reason to justify the Change. Everything yielded to Health Care Reform–the one thing that trumped them all. But that one thing is now hanging by a thread, tied up to the fate of a clueless woman whose name may be forever ill-remembered.

Obama failed history. He failed because he lacks a healthy dose of cynicism of the mass he presides over. More specifically, he failed because he chose to persuade people on Health Care instead of making a clear case for the cause and just push the legislation through.

First of all, health care – After closely following the debate for almost half of year, I have learned enough to draw the following conclusions:
1. The focus of health care reform must be on cost.
2. The biggest challenge to containing the cost issue is the fact the industry is not market-elastic, i.e. the cost curve does not respond to normal supply-demand. There are many reasons, employer paying health care being an prominent one.
3. Without a collective will (out of universal pain) to reform the industry, interest groups play out-sized role to maintain status quo. I am not talking about the insurance industry, but the physicians and the likes of AMA. To me, it is obvious that health care delivery is the biggest reason behind cost increase. If we are to reform health care, we must change how physicians are paid.
4. To restore market-elasticity, the only way to get physicians to change their ways is through a combination of assistance and threat of competition. While assistance may be easier to come by, the threat of competition will not be credible unless there is a large enough alternative that also offers an viable example as an optimal model.
5. I don’t believe anyone other than the Federal Government has the wherewithal to build such an alternative.

Secondly, once the goal is set, it takes two campaigns to realize it: a forceful voice, repeating the merits over and over and over until people take the assumptions as the Truth. Next it takes some professional politicking, LBJ style, to realize it. Instead, Obama chose the route of persuasion. He might think that he has the moral and rational high ground. But to a cynic like me, the truth remains:
1. Not everyone is willing to reason with you, especially if you are the ultimate trophy of the Yankees
2. Even among those who are willing, not everyone is capable of understanding such a complex issue
3. When they are not, people tend to fall back to what they WANT to believe, or not doing anything at all

Lastly, Americans, a rowdy bunch as any other, are nevertheless the quickest to turnaround when they see results.

The way as things stand is the opposite of all three-

I agree with critics who say the current health care bill will increase deficit and is not fiscally sustainable. Nor is there enough reforms in the bill that will show a road map to enlighten us how that is achievable. If we don’t have way to lower the cost but still holds on the universal coverage, the U.S. is heading towards what Japan is like today: perennial budget deficits and political stalemate.

In terms of communications, it is even worse. People on the street are as confused today as they were when the debate began. Not many person can agree on a clear statement of the goal, nor was there any headline-grabber to epitomize the whole bill.

Politically, it is no less a miserable affair. After several months’ debate and horse trading, not only the reforms are watered down, most importantly, the promise of a reform is diluted. And in the end, those who opposed Obama still do. As Lindsay Graham suggested, “anything but health care”.

Some news reports suggest that the Democrats will try to push the Health Care Bill through if Coakley lost. To me, it is the orchestra-on-deck moment.  Obama somehow managed to lead the Democrats into a lose-lose situation: they are damned if they do push the bill through (lack of political legitimacy). And damned if they don’t.

As I said before, maybe Obama is not the right person to lead this country at this juncture. But I wouldn’t put the blame on him.